Chapter Text
Cas doesn’t see Dean for hours after that, though not for lack of trying.
He turns around and heads back to the barn about twenty minutes later, after his heart has stopped pounding and his head has stopped spinning from shock. He stomps back cursing his stupidity and rashness, cursing himself for pushing Dean down and making him cry.
The image of his delicate face, looking up at Cas with such open misery, echoes through the crevices of his mind.
He hadn’t even seemed surprised. He hadn’t even seemed surprised that Cas had pushed him. Just devastated and horribly, horribly, resigned. Dean had burst into tears so quickly that Cas knows he must have been ready to be so harshly rejected, must have been bracing himself for the pain.
Cas hates himself for providing it.
Not for the first time, Cas wonders if he really is the unfeeling changeling child the doctor had accused him of being. Cruel and cold and unaffected by the emotional turmoil of others.
How else could he not have noticed how afraid Dean must have been this whole time? How else could he not have seen that Dean still thought Cas would demand sexual favors of him? How else could he shove a young and frightened boy away, shouting at him and leaving him alone to his tears?
He should have stayed. He should have stayed and sorted things out, comforted Dean, no matter how off balance he felt, no matter how his own heartbeat had picked up in alarm and confusion. He should have stayed.
This truth becomes even clearer when Cas reaches the barn and finds Dean gone.
His heart leaps into his throat at the boy’s absence, and Cas feels a cold rush of fear.
He’s run off. He’s run off he’s run off he’s run off with no shoes and no coat and now he’s going to freeze and it’s your fault.
He pushes his way back out of the barn with every intention of tracking the boy down, running his father’s inn be damned.
But when he exits, he sees what he hadn’t noticed walking in: Footprints in the snow, not made by boots but by bare feet. And they don’t lead into the dark woods or away towards the icy road, but back towards the inn. The tracks don’t lead to the back door he’d run towards, to the kitchen where he had hidden, but around the building towards the front, right up to the main entrance that the boy had come in the first night.
The relief he feels at the realization that Dean is still safe in the inn is enormous.
But when he enters through the main door and comes into the tavern area, Dean is nowhere to be found.
He checks behind the staircase, checks the dark corners Dean had hid in the first night. He checks back in the kitchen again, then in the cellar he hadn’t gotten to show Dean yet, then the stables. He checks his own room, and the outdoor closet, and even the upstairs hallways that lead to the guest’s rooms.
Nowhere is Dean to be found.
He starts to get nervous again, then anxious, then scared.
He serves breakfast as quickly as he can. Dean doesn’t appear in the kitchen during that time, and he looks around the dining room to no avail while he passes out food, frantically enough that people start to look at him oddly.
After that, he goes back to the barn, though there are no new prints in the snow. He comes back to the kitchen upon finding only Luna and the hens.
By the time he finds himself stood staring at Dean’s pile of fireside blankets, Cas feels like he’s going to choke.
Fuck, he thinks, blinking at the furs. Fuck, Dean, where are you?
His hands are twitching at his sides. He’s too distressed to stop them.
Freak, Cas thinks. No wonder you scared Dean away.
Cas makes a noise.
Then another one.
Then another one.
He shuts his eyes.
Then he sits down, curls into a ball, grips his hair so hard it’s painful, and rocks.
The noises don’t stop.
He looks insane.
But there is no one around to see him anyway. He’s scared everyone off.
Fuck, Dean, he thinks, heart aching with fear and guilt. Where are you?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, he can’t do fucking anything right.
Is he gone? Was Cas wrong, had he run off in fear, is he cold and alone in the wild woods somewhere?
But the footprints had come back to the inn. They had, they had, so where could Dean be?
He’s hiding, a voice tells him, and it might be true. He’s hiding from you because he’s afraid of you, he saw what a freak you are, he saw how you’re incapable of human kindness. No one likes the freak, no one likes the freak who yells and rocks and pushes people away instead of holding them close. Everyone’s scared of a freak like that.
Another distressed noise makes its way out of him, louder than the ones that are now constant. He’s scared by Dean disappearing, but he’s glad he’s not here to see this. No way would he want to be around Cas anymore.
If he’s hiding, where could he be? Should Cas try to find him? Or should he just let him be?
Cas used to hide, sometimes, when everything was too much. He knows all the good spots, knows all the dark quiet places one can squeeze into, to find grounding pressure and blessed silence.
He never wanted to be found, when he used to hide. He hated it when his father would find him and make him come out. That’s why he knows absolutely every place there is to hide in this house, because every time his father found him he’d have to find a new hiding spot the next time to avoid being dragged out of the places that his father knew to check.
He tried not to hide so much, especially as he got older and it got weirder. He knew his father didn’t like it when he hid. He looked at him like he was strange. He would ask him so many questions when he found him, over and over, and Cas didn’t want to talk he couldn’t talk he couldn’t talk especially when he went to hide especially when he got dragged out into the bright light and noise. His father would make him talk though, would insist he talk even more than he usually did, though he didn’t want to and didn’t have answers about why he hid that were anything his father wanted to hear.
And he would touch him, would hug him when he got pulled out of hiding, and sometimes being hugged was ok but usually he didn’t like it but oh god after he ran and hid and got caught, being touched made him feel like he was on fire. It make him want to tear his skin off, made him shriek like an animal and push and push and push like he pushed Dean, but his father would’t let him go he wouldn’t let him go and he would just hold him and say things like “it’s ok” and “it will be alright” and “I know, I know,” even though he didn’t know and it wasn’t alright and it wasn’t ok at all.
He used to think hiding was so bad that his father was punishing him when he found him, by dragging him out and making him talk and making him touch even more than the uncomfortable world usually demanded of him.
It was years, years until he understood that his father thought he was comforting him. That most people find it comforting to be held and to talk about what’s wrong. That most people want to be found when they hide, if they hide at all.
He had to learn that he’s wrong, that he’s built all wrong and broken, before he understood that his father wasn’t punishing him for being bad and hiding.
He never told his father he didn’t like to be found, that he didn’t like to be hugged, that he didn’t like to be asked over and over and over what’s wrong what’s wrong, held tighter and tighter until he discovered that ripping some words out of his throat like hooks were the only thing that would make the touch lessen.
He never found a way to tell him just how much of a freak he is.
And how he’s dead, he’s dead, and Cas will never be able to tell him.
He’ll never know just how screwed up Cas is, never again have to see him rocking back and forth like an animal like he is right now.
It’s good. It’s a good thing, right? It’s not good that he’s dead, but it’s good that he never had to know how wrong Cas is, it’s good that he doesn’t have to deal with having Cas for a son.
It’s good, right?
It doesn’t feel good.
Cas doesn’t even know what he’s upset about anymore.
Everyone leaves me. Everyone leaves. No one can stand to be around you, even your father died to get away.
That’s not true. That’s not fair.
It’s not fair.
He still thinks it, sometimes, still wonders in the lonely and long hours of the dark morning.
He wonders if up in heaven, his father is relieved to be away from Cas.
There are tears streaming down his face now. He doesn’t know who they’re for.
The last time he hid was when he woke up four months ago and realized his father was dead.
He hid behind the ale barrels in the cellar for hours, hours and hours and hours, longer than he’d ever been able to before.
Eventually he’d realized that he’d have to come out on his own, because there was no one around anymore to find him and drag him back out.
That had been harder than being pulled out before he was ready.
I can’t do this, Dad, he thinks. I can’t do this alone anymore.
But he has no choice. He has no choice because his father is dead and he scares everyone else away, even Dean, even Dean who he’d liked so much.
Now Dean is hiding from him or gone or never existed at all and he doesn’t know what to think, other than that maybe he’s gone so crazy that he made someone who liked him and could help him up in his head. And if that’s true, Cas might as well walk into the woods and let the cold consume him, because there’s no way anymore for him to stay clinging to life, with these hands that are broken and torn.
*******************
When he comes back to himself, it’s been a long time, which is bad, because he still doesn’t know where Dean is.
He’s been on the floor for a long time. Just staring, not rocking, or making noises. Just staring at the fire and not processing anything.
His mind comes back to him slowly, in pieces, and it’s a while before the part of his brain that notices he’s calming down blinks to life and lets him know he can stand.
When it does, he goes over to the sink. It’s empty of all but water, because Cas hadn’t bothered collecting people’s breakfast dishes.
More work for his later self, but Cas finds it hard to even try to care.
He washes his face of the sticky dried tears and presses a cold cloth to his eyes to help the redness go down.
After a few minutes, he doesn’t know if he looks any better, but he’s wasted too much time already being a freak.
There is nowhere else to look. He could start searching the hiding places, but that would take hours, and what if Dean left again after coming back to the inn? Cas can’t waste that time if Dean is outside getting hypothermia.
There’s one option that could speed up the search process, an option that makes Cas sick to his stomach to think about. It’s the option he knew he was being cornered by as time went on and places Dean could be dwindled, the option he had felt creeping up on him that had probably had a lot to do with his meltdown.
He’s going to have to talk to people.
He’s going to have to talk to people, without a script, without the memorized words of how can I help you, and enjoy your food.
He’s going to have to talk to people without scaring them away. A lot of people, probably. In a loud, noisy area in front of many others.
Cas shuts his eyes, and puts his head in his hands.
Maybe it won’t be so bad, Cas thinks. Maybe the first person you talk to will know where Dean is.
If only his luck was so grand.
I hate talking to people, he thinks, and he feels his hands start to tremble as he drops them back down to his sides.
He hates talking to people. He really does. People. Strangers. He hates talking to strangers, and almost everyone is a stranger, because his father is dead and no one likes him so he has no friends.
Involuntarily, he thinks of Dean.
Dean is nice. He still doesn’t talk so much, but Dean doesn’t seem to mind, and that in itself makes the words come easier.
Is Dean his friend?
Cas shakes his head.
Not after this morning, he thinks.
Maybe he could have been. But not anymore.
Another wave of self hatred washes over him, and Cas clenches his fists as he waits for it to pass.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he likes Cas, if he liked Cas, if Cas could have had a friend if he hadn’t fucked everything up once again.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Dean needs help, so Cas needs to find him.
He walks out of the kitchen without another thought, keeping his mind blank to keep from talking himself out of what he’s about to do.
He moves towards the first person he sees, a middle aged woman sitting at the counter, still finishing up her porridge.
She’s talking to another woman as he approaches, but they both fall silent as he appears next to them.
They look at him expectantly.
Cas feels his throat close up.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Excuse me, Ma’am.
Excuse me, Ma’am. Where is-
Excuse me, Ma’am. Have you seen Dean.
Have you seen a boy.
Have you seen a young boy.
Have you seen a young boy with bruises who looks scared all the time.
Have you seen a young boy with freckles.
Can you tell me where Dean is.
Have you seen a young boy with freckles. Excuse me Ma’am.
Ma’am. Where is Dean.
Excuse me Ma’am. Have you seen a young boy with freckles and green eyes.
Excuse me Ma’am. Have you seen a young boy with freckles and green eyes.
Excuse me Ma’am. Have you seen a young boy with freckles and green eyes.
Cas opens his mouth.
Excuse me Ma’am. Have you seen a young boy with freckles and green eyes.
Excuse me Ma’am.
Excuse me Ma’am.
Excuse me Ma’am.
Nothing comes out.
The woman is staring at him. Her friend is staring at him too. Their expressions have gone from expectant to confused. They’ll get annoyed soon. Cas knows from experience.
Excuse me Ma’am.
Excuse me Ma’am.
“Can I help you?” The woman says.
Is she being genuine? Is she being sarcastic, because Cas is so strange? Is she angry?
Cas can’t tell, he can’t fucking tell.
Excuse me Ma’am.
Excuse me Ma’am.
Cas turns around and walks back into the kitchen without saying a word.
He collapses against the wall as soon as the door is shut.
Heart pounding a mile a minute, he thinks he is going to cry, but he doesn’t, because as he finds out, his eyes are all out of tears.
Hands come up to grip his hair again and he tugs, he tugs like he is trying to rip it out, and it hurts.
Freak.
“Freak,” he whispers to himself, and it makes him even angrier, that he can talk now, alone, to insult himself, but not to say the words he needs to to find Dean.
Dean.
He shouldn’t have pushed him away.
If he hadn’t pushed him away and shouted. Dean would be here now. He would be here, next to him.
It would be easier to talk if Dean was here.
Why is it so much easier to talk when Dean is here?
Why is it so much easier to talk when Dean is here?
Cas drops his hands to his lap and stares down at them.
He swallows.
Is it easier to talk when Dean is here?
He hasn’t thought about it much.
All he knows is that he hasn’t felt like he does right now, like he’s trying to yank unmoving words from his throat, since Dean arrived.
But is that because it’s easier to talk around Dean? Or is it because Dean doesn’t make you talk when the words aren’t coming?
Cas pulls his knees in, and rests his head on them.
The truth is, if he’s brave enough to admit it, is that he doesn’t talk much around Dean either.
He talks. More than he does around strangers. More comfortably than he did around his father, even.
But he’s still quiet.
He still doesn’t speak much.
Why does it still feel like Dean understands all the things he wants to tell him?
Why is it so easy to communicate with Dean, even when he isn’t talking?
The answer comes from his heart.
Because he listens to you even when you aren’t speaking.
He feels something burst open within him at the thought.
He speaks sometimes, with Dean. But he hasn’t been speaking all the time, either. He just points, sometimes, or gestures. He hands things to Dean, and takes them, shows him how to do something without speaking and Dean just takes it all in anyway.
Use your words, Castiel.
That’s what his father would say, when he tried that with him.
He tried to use his words. Sometimes he was successful, sort of. But it made him tired. It took so much energy, to talk when he didn’t feel like the words were coming. It made it harder to talk at other points, in the evening, over breakfast, made it harder to talk when he did feel like he had something to say.
Dean doesn’t make him talk when he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t make him try again and again to make his words make sense, after he’s forced them out.
You’re not scaring me, Sir.
The memory of Dean’s words ring in his brain.
Cas had been a mess, last night. He’d stuttered and cried and collapsed and not made any sense, verbally. And Dean had understood anyway, had understood that Cas needed help, had taken the broom and sent Cas to bed without Cas having to ask.
He’d even hugged Cas, and it hadn’t felt like fire, because when Cas moved away he had let go of him.
You’re not scaring me, Sir.
He never means to scare anyone. He’s just trying to show what he thinks and feels, in a language that isn’t English. But no one ever understands him, so they get freaked out.
He freaks everyone out.
Except Dean.
You’re not scaring me, Sir.
Cas swallows, heart feeling swelled with emotion.
Can you hear me, Dean?
Dean can hear him. Dean can hear him, even when he doesn’t talk.
Cas can’t talk right now. He just can’t. It doesn’t matter how important it is, doesn’t matter how much he panics. Those things just make it more impossible, like a wall that is just growing higher.
Dean wouldn’t make him talk. He wouldn’t try to make him talk if he couldn’t.
Dean would still understand.
There are ways to communicate without speaking. There are, there are, Dean can hear him.
Cas tries to steady himself, steady his mind, push away the voice berating him for not being normal.
He needs to find Dean. He needs to find Dean. This is too important to allow himself to sink into self hatred, too important a thing to not manage to communicate at all because he was focused on doing it “right.”
How would I communicate to someone who can hear me that I need to find Dean?
How would I communicate to Dean that I need to find Dean?
Would he gesture? Point? Mime something out?
No.
No, none of those things are specific enough to work.
Not for the first time, he wishes he knew how to read and write.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t, so what else can he do?
Well.
What do I need other people to know so they understand what I need?
They need to know what Dean looks like, and they need to know that Cas can’t find him.
Drawing.
It comes to him at once, like it had been there all along.
Cas thinks maybe it had been, but he’d been too scared of looking at it in case it made him a freak.
But he can’t care about that right now. Something more important is at stake.
He stands, finally, and fetches a piece of parchment from the cabinet, as well a piece of charcoal he can scribble with.
His drawing is not very good, and it lacks the colors that Cas thinks would make Dean more recognizable. He adds freckles, and contemplates if that’s enough to let people know who he’s looking for.
He bites his lip, and hesitates.
After a moment, he gives in, though he doesn’t like it, and adds the bruises on Dean’s face that he knows are unmistakable.
When he puts the charcoal down, he has a picture of Dean.
This has to work, Cas thinks. It just has to.
He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if it doesn’t.
When he leaves the kitchen again, he feels his face heat up from the embarrassment of what he’s about to do. The women he’d previously approached spot him immediately, and they stare at him with expressions Cas doesn’t understand.
His father wouldn’t like him using the drawing. His father would try to make him speak, and then do it himself if Cas couldn’t force the words out.
His father isn’t here.
His father is dead, but Dean isn’t, and Cas needs to find him.
And the women think he’s a freak already anyway. He isn’t going to make them any more uncomfortable than he already had.
He approaches the women again. They stare at him as he comes.
Cas looks away from them, unable to handle their eyes.
Awkwardly, he shoves the drawing towards them, making it clear that he wants them to look at it.
It takes them a moment to respond. Eventually, the older one says, “Oh! That’s that skinny boy who’s been around.”
Cas nods.
“I saw him come in a few hours ago,” says the other. “He didn’t look very happy. Are you looking for him?”
Cas nods again, and swallows.
Neither of them are laughing in his face, or screaming and running from him in fear.
The knot in his stomach starts to lessen.
“Mmhm,” he manages to mumble.
“Oh dear,” says the older. “I think he left already, with that man. You know, the one with the mutton chops? I assumed the boy belonged to him. Is that not the case?”
Cas does look at them now, as his heart jumps into his throat.
The man with the mutton chops. That’s the one who’d taken Dean up on his offer (his body) that first night.
Cas had seen him dragging his bags out in the morning, but had paid him no mind, too busy looking for Dean.
I think he left already, with that man.
No. No, no, no, no, no.
Why would Dean leave with him, of all people?
Blood rushing to his head, Cas takes a step back, then another step, and then he turns around and bolts away from the women and towards the front door.
No, no no no no no no no.
He’s gone, he’s gone, he left, he left with a man who is big and rough and has no problem shoving his cock down the throat of a shivering starving child.
Cas remembers how little coin he’d given Dean, as he shoves his way out the door, into the snow.
He sees no one around.
No.
No.
Why would Dean leave with that man? Had Cas really scared him so badly, that he thought that angry drunk would be safer?
He runs to the stables, desperately, in distress and panic, hoping hoping hoping against hope-
He turns the corner, and sees Dean, huddled next to a bag laden horse, looking small and cold and tired. The man is nowhere to be found.
Relief punches the air out of him like a scream.
“Dean,” he says wretchedly, and Dean’s head snaps up. His eyes are big and green like grass.
He’s not wearing the tunic and leggings he’d been wearing this morning, but has changed back into the threadbare, bloodied outfit he’d had on when he’d arrived.
No coat or shoes either, of course.
“Dean,” he says again, words still feeling sluggish and thick in his gut.
The boy blinks back at him. He has a new bruise along his jawline that hadn’t been there that morning, and his right cheek is too red, like he’d been slapped.
Cas wants to cry with despair.
Why, Dean? Am I really worse than him?
The words don’t come. The words don’t come, and they just stand there looking at each other, with Cas breathing heavily from how fast he had run, until finally Dean spots the drawing Cas still has clutched in his hand.
He looks at it, then looks away, then looks at it again.
He hugs his middle before he speaks, like he’s unconsciously preparing to get hit if Cas doesn’t like what he says.
“Is…is that me?” he whispers tentatively.
It takes Cas a moment to rip his eyes away from the new injuries Dean’s been given in the few hours he’s been missing. When he does, he blinks down at the parchment in surprise. He’d forgotten he was holding it.
He can’t speak, still, can barely think, so he just nods once, and holds the parchment out for Dean to take, feeling like he’s handing him his heart to be considered.
It’s all he has to offer.
Dean approaches him nervously, like he thinks Cas is going to shout at him again. Cas stays very still, like he did when gaining the chickens’s trust.
Dean takes the parchment from his hand slowly, as if afraid Cas is going to snatch his hand back at the last second.
Their fingers brush, and Cas savors the touch. Dean doesn’t seem to notice.
Cas is braced for Dean to skitter away once he has the drawing, to skitter backwards like he wants nothing more than to get out of Cas’s striking range.
But when Dean takes the parchment, he stays put. He stays put, and Cas clutches that fact to his chest like hope.
Dean studies the drawing for a long time, in front of him. Cas waits for his verdict like it matters, like his opinion on the sketch is the difference between Dean staying and leaving.
When Dean speaks, though, he doesn’t say anything about the drawing’s quality or whether he likes it or not.
“I’m smiling,” Dean says instead, sounding amazed. It takes Cas a confused moment of looking at Dean’s unsmiling mouth to understand that he’s talking about the drawing.
Yes, Cas says in his head. Of course you are.
He hadn’t even thought about drawing him any other way. Of course he was smiling. In Cas’s head, Dean would be smiling forever.
“Dean,” Cas says for the third time, and then finally manages to push his voice forward. “Dean, why are you leaving with him?”
He’s heartbroken. His voice doesn’t always reflect what he feels, because he’s strange, but he’s heartbroken. He hopes Dean can tell. Not to make him feel bad, but to maybe, maybe, make him realize how bad Cas feels about yelling at him earlier.
Maybe, maybe he will be forgiven, and Dean will stay.
Dean lowers the parchment slowly after Cas speaks, until his hand, with the drawing in it, is hanging limp by his side.
He’s not looking at Cas when he speaks.
“He’s agreed to take me to the next town,” he says simply, as if this is supposed to be enough for Cas to walk away.
It isn’t.
“He’s going to hurt you.”
Dean must know this. He must know.
Cas tells him anyway, just in case.
But Dean doesn’t react like he’s learned of some new danger.
He just shrugs, resigned.
“It’s not like he’s going to keep me. I was hoping he might want to, but. Well. No one wants another mouth to feed.”
Cas looks back at Dean, not understanding, not understanding how he could have messed up so badly.
“You’ll be on your own?”
Dean nods.
Miserable, useless warnings fall out of his mouth like raindrops.
He’s begging, really. He’s begging.
“Dean, what will you do? Where will you go? It’s winter, Dean, there’s no work. There won’t be work till spring.”
“There’s always work, of the kind I’m used to.”
Cas steps back as if slapped.
Dean won’t look him in the eye.
Terror coalesces in his stomach like honey.
The thought of Dean, lovely kind hardworking Dean, left out in the cold streets of some ugly town. On his knees in the snow, being used, being hit, being pushed around for so little compensation. Of him sleeping on the streets, vulnerable to weather and robbers and rapists. Of him going hungry, of him shivering, of him in pain, in pain, and in constant fear of receiving more.
His heart starts to break apart in his chest like it is being stomped on.
I know I messed up, Dean, but please. Please, let me make it up to you. Please don’t leave. I know I’m all broken, I know I scared you, but I’m not as bad as that, I promise.
I promise.
His eyes start to sting.
“Please don’t go, Dean,” he whispers.
Dean still isn’t looking at him, but he tenses.
Cas wonders if he’s afraid now that Cas won’t let him leave. Like he’s going to grab him and keep him here against his will.
Fuck.
He ruins everything he touches.
“You can go if you want,” he adds desperately, not wanting to scare Dean off even more than he already has. “I won’t force you to stay. You can always go, you can always leave. But please. Please just think about it.”
The words are coming now, are coming unstuck, because they’re for Dean, they’re for Dean, please Dean you showed me you can hear me, please please hear me now.
“I know it’s not much. I can’t pay you. I can’t. I can’t provide you with much besides an unfair amount of work, little coin and simple food. And I know- I know-” Cas shudders.
“I know what I am. I know I’m built all wrong, that I’m hard to be around, that I scare people, that I scared you too. But I’m not. I. You don’t have to be scared of me, Dean, I swear it. I won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
Dean looks so alone, standing with his bare feet in his skimpy tunic, eyes wet and red and shoulders curled in.
Cas wants to tuck him into his chest where no one can ever, ever hurt him again.
“There will always been food for you here. There will always be a warm place to sleep. I’d never beat you, or whore you out, or, or send you out in the snow without proper clothing. I wouldn’t, not ever. Please. I can’t offer much, and I’m not much either. But please give me a chance to show you I can give you something better than what’s out there waiting for you alone. This could be your home, Dean. It’s small, and full of work, but it could be yours, as much as it is mine.”
He drops his hands when he’s finished speaking, and only then notices that they’d been extended in front of him, pleading, pleading with Dean to stay.
He has nothing else to say, because he has nothing else to offer.
He’s shown all his cards to Dean, and can only hope, now, that they will be enough.
Dean, for his part, has curled even farther into himself than he had been before his speech. He’s pulled the drawing Cas had handed him close to his chest, but is staring down at it, head ducked and shoulders tight.
Cas would have put more effort into it if he’d known it was going to mean so much to him.
When Dean speaks, his voice is barely there.
“I’ve never seen myself smile, before,” he whispers.
Cas blinks, unsure what to say.
“Can I keep this?” Dean asks, and Cas answers, “Of course.”
But his heart starts to sink, because that sounds like goodbye.
Dean inches closer, shuffling forward, slow and slow and steady, until he’s so close that Cas can feel his breath on his neck.
For a second Cas is afraid that he’s done something wrong, and they are going to have a repeat performance of what had happened this morning.
But Dean doesn’t sink down to his knees.
Instead, he tucks his head into Cas’s neck, resting his head on his shoulder.
The rest of his body stays still, arms limp by his sides.
Uncertain of what he is supposed to do, they stand there in that awkward position for a few moments, before Cas, hazarding a guess, lifts his arms to circle the other boy.
He pulls Dean tighter against his chest, and Dean melts.
Cas feels the satisfaction of having made the right decision, of having gentled Dean into relaxing, burst brightly inside of him.
Tentatively, Dean lifts his arms to clutch at Cas’s back, and Cas finds that right now, he doesn’t mind the touch.
“Do you….like me?”
The childish question falls from Dean’s lips without warning, and something about the earnest vulnerability makes Cas hold Dean a little more firmly.
“Of course I do, Dean.”
“Most people don’t.”
Cas opens his mouth to argue, to say that that isn’t true.
But he thinks of the bruises on Dean’s body, of how the other patrons had looked at him, of how Dean’s loyalty has made him start to suspect that he might have been thrown out instead of having run away.
Cas swallows his words. He kisses the top of Dean’s head.
“Well. Most people don’t like me either.”
“I do.”
The words hit Cas harder than he would have expected them to, and he has to bite his lip to keep from crying.
“I know I’m just a slut and it doesn’t matter. But I do. I do like you.”
Cas shakes his head.
“You’re not any kind of slut, Dean, and it does matter. It matters to me more than I can say.”
Dean doesn’t react, and Cas thinks he probably doesn’t believe him.
But no matter. The longer Dean stays in Cas’s arms, the more Cas believes that he might stick around long enough for Cas to show him the truth.
“Dean?” He asks.
“Mmhm?”
“Does this…does this mean you’re staying?”
Dean shifts against him, and sighs like he’s feeling safe for the first time in his life.
“Cas,” he says, and a bubble of joy appears in Cas’s weary heart at hearing his name for the first time in Dean’s pretty voice.
It sounds like bells, Cas thinks.
“Cas, if you want me, if you really want me, I’ll stay until the end of the world.”
The joyful bubble expands and expands and expands until it pops out of his chest and into the stables and covers both of them in happiness like daisies.